The moral question surrounding the proposed southern border wall

WASHINGTON (SBG) - The battle over President Trump's proposed border wall covers a lot of ground and not just along the 2000 miles of our southern border.

With the partial government shutdown now in its fourth week, Americans could be forgiven for believing the whole fight to be about money. More specifically, the $5.7 billion the trump administration wants for a border wall that congressional Democrats are unwilling to appropriate.

The battle is also being waged on a separate front.

“A wall is an immorality. It's not who we are as a nation,” said Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D- Calif.

President Donald Trump blamed politicians for the inaction.

“The only thing that is immoral is the politicians to do nothing and continue to allow more innocent people to be so horribly victimized,” said President Trump.

The idea that walling off a country's borders is immoral would have seemed more than passing strange to the first Chinese Emperor, Qin Shi Huang who commenced work on the great wall of China 2200 years ago. But leading Democrats, like the new chairman of the house homeland security committee, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., cite America's more recent history to cast the president's proposal as ethically challenged.

“I see us as being a bastion of hope for people who feel oppressed,” said Thompson. “So, I look at the wall as something that does not say what American values really are.”

Meanwhile, President Trump met at the White House Friday with a group prepared to argue the morality of his signature initiative from a unique perspective that of law enforcement.

“National security is a fundamental part of this country. Having a sovereign border we control -- that’s American,” said A.J. Louderback, Sheriff of Jackson County, Texas.

Director of Arizona Public Safety Department Col. Frank Milstead said it about protecting the country.

"It’s not about separatism; it’s not about racism. It’s about protecting Arizona and protecting America from human trafficking and drug trafficking,” Milstead remarked.

For now, President Donald Trump said late Friday, he will not invoke a national emergency to build the wall. But if he changes his mind, the battle will then shift to the federal courts, where the argument will be over neither money nor morality but the law and whether the powers of the chief executive enable him to make such a declaration.